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The post International Days List first appeared on The World of English.

War and peace quotes

Carl William Brown — Thu, 01 Jan 2026 12:21:42 +0000

War and peace quotes

War and peace quotes, aphorisms, ideas and thoughts about the dramatic difference between the effects of war and the desire of human kind for peace and love.

World Day of Peace, celebrated on January 1 every year, is primarily a Catholic feast day dedicated to universal peace on the Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God. On this occasion, Popes generally make authoritative declarations on the Catholic Social Teachings. (Visit our International Days List.)

Dear William, how is it that there are so many wars in this stupid world? Dear Brown, it’s because peace is a very apoplexy, lethargy; mulled, deaf, sleepy, insensible; a getter of more bastard children than war’s a destroyer of men.
Carl William Brown via William Shakespeare

DA Datta, DA Dayadhvam, DA Damyata, shantih, shantih, shantih! (Give, sympathize, control, peace, peace, peace).
T.S. Eliot from The Waste Land

It is far easier to make war than to make peace.
Georges Clemenceau

A true warrior fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.
G.K. Chesterton

The giving of blood is imbued with the psychology of peace, for it leaves its humanitarian mark in the hearts of those who give for their fellowman.
Red Cross Courier

There is no path to peace. Peace is the path.
Mahatma Ghandi

If you are going through hell, keep going.
Winston Churchill

Rome remained free for four hundred years and Sparta eight hundred, although their citizens were armed all that time; but many other states that have been disarmed have lost their liberties in less than forty years.
Niccolo Machiavelli

No country has suffered so much from the ruins of war while being at peace as the American.
Edward Dahlberg

It is open to a war resister to judge between the combatants and wish success to the one who has justice on his side. By so judging he is more likely to bring peace between the two than by remaining a mere spectator.
Mahatma Gandhi

War is hell and all that, but it has a good deal to recommend it. It wipes out all the small nuisances of peace time.
Ian Hay

In peace, sons bury their fathers. In war, fathers bury their sons.
Herodotus

Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the peace of God.
A Course In Miracles

I am searching for that which every man seeks – peace and rest.
Dante Alighieri

Harmony is one phase of the law whose spiritual expression is love.
James Allen

All that a pacifist can undertake – but it is a very great deal – is to refuse to kill, injure or otherwise cause suffering to another human creature, and untiringly to order his life by the rule of love though others may be captured by hate.
Vera Brittain

Bullets cannot be recalled. They cannot be uninvented. But they can be taken out of the gun.
Martin Amis

Adapt yourself to the things among which your lot has been cast and love sincerely the fellow creatures with whom destiny has ordained that you shall live.
Marcus Aurelius

Nowhere can man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul.
Marcus Aurelius

By now the cold war has turned into a hot peace, and people have already begun to sweat a lot.
Carl William Brown

The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit. The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are.
Marcus Aurelius

Gandhi quote on peace

Right human relations is the only true peace.
Alice A. Bailey

When we believe that God is Father, we also believe that such a father’s hand will never cause his child a needless tear. We may not understand life any better, but we will not resent life any longer.
William Barclay

If the history of the past fifty years teaches us anything, it is that peace does not follow disarmament — disarmament follows peace.
Bernard M. Baruch

The peace is won by accompanying God into the battle.
Eivind Josef Berggrav

For those who wish to climb the mountain of spiritual awareness, the path is selfless work. For those who have attained the summit of union with the Lord, the path is stillness and peace.
Bhagavad Gita

Peace, in international affairs, is a period of cheating between two periods of fighting.
Ambrose Bierce

A government which does not trust its citizens to be armed is not itself to be trusted.
Niccolo Machiavelli

If they want peace, nations should avoid the pin-pricks that precede cannon-shots.
Napoleon Bonaparte

When you’re finally up on the moon, looking back at the earth, all these differences and nationalistic traits are pretty well going to blend and you’re going to get a concept that maybe this is really one world and why the hell can’t we learn to live together like decent people?
Frank Borman

Let me have war, say I: it exceeds peace as far as day does night; it’s spritely, waking, audible, and full of vent. Peace is a very apoplexy, lethargy; mulled, deaf, sleepy, insensible; a getter of more bastard children than war’s a destroyer of men.
William Shakespeare

We’ve learned how to destroy, but not to create; how to waste, but not to build; how to kill men, but not how to save them; how to die, but seldom how to live.
Omar Nelson Bradley

In truth, to attain to interior peace, one must be willing to pass through the contrary to peace. Such is the teaching of the Sages.
Swami Brahmananda

Don’t tell me peace has broken out.
Bertolt Brecht

We used to wonder where war lived, what it was that made it so vile. And now we realize that we know where it lives, that it is inside ourselves.
Albert Camus

There is no shadow of protection to be had by sheltering behind the slender stockades of visionary speculation, or by hiding behind the wagon-wheels of pacific theories.
Madame Chiang Kai-Shek

Peace symbol

I prefer the most unfair peace to the most righteous war.
Marcus T. Cicero

It is far easier to make war than to make peace.
Georges Clemenceau

What all men are really after is some form, or perhaps only some formula, of peace.
Joseph Conrad

Peace is produced by war.
Pierre Corneille

We discovered that peace at any price is no peace at all… life at any price has no value whatever;… life is nothing without the privileges, the prides, the rights, the joys that make it worth living, and also worth giving.
Eve Curie

No country has suffered so much from the ruins of war while being at peace as the American.
Edward Dahlberg

The best thing to be happy would be to live in peace and harmony with our neighbor, but where this is not possible, rather than living as slaves, war, destruction and death are better.
Carl William Brown

If you want to make peace, you don’t talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.
Moshe Dayan

That doctrine of peace at any price has done more mischief than any I can well recall that have been afloat in this country. It has occasioned more wars than any of the most ruthless conquerors. It has disturbed and nearly destroyed that political equilibrium so necessary to the liberties and the welfare of the world.
Benjamin Disraeli

A mind at peace, a mind centered and not focused on harming others, is stronger than any physical force in the universe.
Wayne Dyer

Every kind of peaceful cooperation among men is primarily based on mutual trust and only secondarily on institutions such as courts of justice and police.
Albert Einstein

Peace and justice are two sides of the same coin.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

Though force can protect in emergency, only justice, fairness, consideration and cooperation can finally lead men to the dawn of eternal peace.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

We have heard much of the phrase, “peace and friendship.” This phrase, in expressing the aspiration of America, is not complete. We should say instead, “peace and friendship, in freedom.” This, I think, is America’s real message to the rest of the world.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

We seek peace, knowing that peace is the climate of freedom.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

Think not forever of yourselves, O Chiefs, nor of your own generation. Think of continuing generations of our families, think of our grandchildren and of those yet unborn, whose faces are coming from beneath the ground.
T. S. Eliot

He that would live in peace and at ease must not speak all he knows or all he sees.
Benjamin Franklin

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Trust the actions and impulses of your soul-venture bravely and all is well.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Carl William Brown

There never was a good war or a bad peace.
Benjamin Franklin

Peace is not something you wish for; It’s something you make, Something you do, Something you are, And something you give away.
Robert Fulghum

Peace we want because there is another war to fight: against poverty and disease.
Indira Gandhi

In George Orwell’s 1984 novel, the Ministry of Truth is for telling lies and the Ministry of Peace, which is equivalent to our Ministry of Defense, is for waging war.
Carl William Brown

Nonviolence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind. It is mightier than the mightiest weapon of destruction devised by the ingenuity of man.
Mahatma Gandhi

Peace between countries must rest on the solid foundation of love between individuals.
Mahatma Gandhi

A peace that comes from fear and not from the heart is the opposite of peace.
Gersonides

It is easier to lead men to combat, stirring up their passion, than to restrain them and direct them toward the patient labors of peace.
Andre Gide

We look forward to the time when the Power of Love will replace the Love of Power. Then will our world know the blessings of Peace.
William E. Gladstone

In back of tranquility lies always conquered unhappiness.
David Grayson

Never for the sake of peace and quiet deny your convictions.
Dag Hammarskjold

The pursuit of peace and progress cannot end in a few years in either victory or defeat. The pursuit of peace and progress, with its trials and its errors, its successes and its setbacks, can never be relaxed and never abandoned.
Dag Hammarskjold

Without free, self-respecting, and autonomous citizens there can be no free and independent nations. Without internal peace, that is, peace among citizens and between the citizens and the state, there can be no guarantee of external peace.
Vaclav Havel

War is hell and all that, but it has a good deal to recommend it. It wipes out all the small nuisances of peace time.
Ian Hay

If mankind had wished for what is right, they might have had it long ago.
William Hazlitt

In moderating, not satisfying desires, lies peace.
Ben Hecht

One sword keeps another in the sheath.
George Herbert

There may be those on earth who dress better or eat better, but those who enjoy the peace of God sleep better.
Thomas L. Holdcroft

When you have a sound mind, you can do what’s necessary.
Evander Holyfield

Peace is not made at the council table or by treaties, but in the hearts of men.
Herbert Clark Hoover

Peace has its victories no less than war, but it doesn’t have as many monuments to unveil.
Kin Hubbard

Universal peace sounds ridiculous to the head of an average family.
Kin Hubbard

Peace is a daily, a weekly, a monthly process, gradually changing opinions, slowly eroding old barriers, quietly building new structures.
John F. Kennedy

The pursuit of peace resembles the building of a great cathedral. It is the work of a generation. In concept it requires a master-architect; in execution, the labors of many.
Hubert H. Humphrey

Peaceful nature

It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions in favor of vegetarianism, while the wolf remains of a different opinion.
Dean William R. Inge

Peace of mind comes from not wanting to change others.
Gerald G. Jampolsky

Peace and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy, and I wish we may be permitted to pursue it.
Thomas Jefferson

It is obvious that in order to educate for peace, one must first know the true value of war.
Carl William Brown

Not peace at any price! Chains are worse than bayonets.
Douglas William Jerrold

There is peace more destructive of the manhood of living man than war is destructive of his material body.
Douglas William Jerrold

To get Peace you must work for Justice.
John Paul VI

If we are to live together in peace, we must come to know each other better.
Lyndon B. Johnson

Peace is a journey of a thousand miles and it must be taken one step at a time.
Lyndon B. Johnson

I do not want the peace which passeth understanding; I want the understanding which bringeth peace.
Helen Keller

Do not let your peace depend on the hearts of men; whatever they say about you, good or bad, you are not because of it another man, for as you are, you are.
Thomas a Kempis

First keep peace with yourself, then you can also bring peace to others.
Thomas a Kempis

Peace and happiness are what you covet, but these are only to be obtained by labor.
Thomas a Kempis

But peace does not rest in the charters and covenants alone. It lies in the hearts and minds of all people. So let us not rest all our hopes on parchment and on paper, let us strive to build peace, a desire for peace, a willingness to work for peace in the hearts and minds of all of our people. I believe that we can. I believe the problems of human destiny are not beyond the reach of human beings.
John F. Kennedy

It is an unfortunate fact that we can secure peace only by preparing for war.
John F. Kennedy

World peace, like community peace, does not require that each man love his neighbor — it requires only that they live together with mutual tolerance, submitting their disputes to a just and peaceful settlement.
John F. Kennedy

You can’t have a better tomorrow if you are thinking about yesterday all the time.
Charles F. Kettering

Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.
Martin Luther King Jr.

Please, we can get along here.
Rodney King

Yes, we are all different. Different customs, different foods, different mannerisms, different languages, but not so different that we cannot get along with one another. If we will disagree without being disagreeable.
Martin J. Kohe

When a man finds no peace within himself, it is useless to seek it elsewhere.
Francois De La Rochefoucauld

When we are unable to find tranquility within ourselves, it is useless to seek it elsewhere.
Francois De La Rochefoucauld

There is no such thing as inner peace. There is only nervousness or death. Any attempt to prove otherwise constitutes unacceptable behavior.
Fran Lebowitz

The only peace, the only security, is in fulfillment.
Henry Miller

All we are saying is give peace a chance…
John Lennon

War and peace aphorisms

If you want peace, prepare for war, in fact after wars generally there are always periods of peace.
Carl William Brown

Imagine all the people living life in peace. You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us, and the world will be as one.
John Lennon

You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.
John Lennon

Live and let live is the rule of common justice.
Sir Roger L’Estrange

Peace of mind is that mental condition in which you have accepted the worst.
Yutang, Lin

Ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors of bullets.
Abraham Lincoln

Force is all-conquering, but its victories are short-lived.
Abraham Lincoln

Nothing is more conducive to peace of mind than not having any opinion at all.
Georg Christoph Litchenberg

I heard the bells on Christmas Day. Their old familiar carols play. And wild and sweet the words repeat. Of peace on earth goodwill to men.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

This is a sane, wholesome, practical, working faith: That it is a man’s business to do the will of God; second, that God himself takes on the care of that man; and third, that therefore that man ought never to be afraid of anything.
George MacDonald

As the birth of a country arises may all victory come through peace.
Todd D. Maddocks

Every goal, every action, every thought, every feeling one experiences, whether it be consciously or unconsciously known, is an attempt to increase one’s level of peace of mind.
Sidney Madwed

War can only be abolished through war, and in order to get rid of the gun it is necessary to take up the gun.
Zedong Mao

In a world filled with causes for worry and anxiety.. we need the peace of God standing guard over our hearts and minds.
Jerry W. McCant

Let us ever remember that our interest is in concord, not in conflict; and that our real eminence rests in the victories of peace, not those of war.
William McKinley

Let the ideas clash but not the hearts.
C. C. Mehta

The fruit of peace is love and the fruit of love is forgiveness.
Mary of Mejugorje

One can always win a war, but how does one conquer peace?
Michael Holmboe Meyer

If there is to be any peace it will come through being, not having.
Henry Miller

Peace has her victories which are no less renowned than war.
John Milton

War is pillage versus resistance and if illusions of magnitude could be transmuted into ideals of magnanimity, peace might be realized.
Marianne Moore

Everybody today seems to be in such a terrible rush, anxious for greater developments and greater riches and so on, so that children have very little time for their parents. Parents have very little time for each other, and in the home begins the disruption of peace of the world.
Mother Teresa

“Intelligence” and “military” are two words that together form such a paradoxical contrast that in comparison with it the values of war and peace are nothing but a naive identity between hate and love.
Carl William Brown

If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.
Mother Teresa

Euro fighters

If the Nazis have really been guilty of the unspeakable crimes circumstantially imputed to them, then – let us make no mistake – pacifism is faced with a situation with which it cannot cope. The conventional pacifist conception of a reasonable or generous peace is irrelevant to this reality.
John Middleton Murry

The man who has gotten everything he wants is all in favor of peace and order.
Jawaharlal Nehru

What we need is a generation of peace.
Jawaharlal Nehru

Peace is no more than a dream as long as we need the comfort of the clan.
Peter Nicols

Nonviolence is the supreme law of life.
Indian Proverb

Peace with a club in hand is war.
Portuguese Proverb

Violence is unnecessary and costly. Peace is the only way.
Julius Kambarge Nyerere

Better to eat beans in peace than to eat meat in distress.
Guatemalan Proverb

The world cannot continue to wage war like physical giants and to seek peace like intellectual pygmies.
Basil O’Connor

Watch your manner of speech if you wish to develop a peaceful state of mind. Start each day by affirming peaceful, contented and happy attitudes and your days will tend to be pleasant and successful.
Norman Vincent Peale

One little person, giving all of her time to peace, makes news. Many people, giving some of their time, can make history.
Peace Pilgrim

This is the way of peace: Overcome evil with good, falsehood with truth, and hatred with love.
Peace Pilgrim

When you find peace within yourself, you become the kind of person who can live at peace with others.
Peace Pilgrim

World peace will never be stable until enough of us find inner peace to stabilize it
Peace Pilgrim

The true and solid peace of nations consists not in equality of arms, but in mutual trust alone.
Pope John XXIII

If you want peace work for justice.
Pope Paul VI

I’ve got to have a place where I can find peace of mind.
Princess Diana

In one way or another, power almost always ends up degenerating and those who do not rebel against his vanity in times of peace cannot therefore be opposed to his stupidity in times of war.
Carl William Brown

There can be no peace of mind in love, since the advantage one has secured is never anything but a fresh starting-point for further desires.
Marcel Proust

Do something at its right time, and peace will accompany it.
African Proverb

If you want to live in peace, you must not tell everything that you know, nor judge everything that you see.
Mexican Proverb

If a man would live in peace he should be blind, deaf, and dumb.
Turkish Proverb

If we want a free and peaceful world, if we want to make the deserts bloom and man grow to greater dignity as a human being, we can do it.
Eleanor Roosevelt

It isn’t enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn’t enough to believe in it. One must work at it.
Eleanor Roosevelt

Peace, like charity, begins at home.
Franklin D. Roosevelt

Peace is normally a great good, and normally it coincides with righteousness, but it is righteousness and not peace which should bind the conscience of a nation as it should bind the conscience of an individual; and neither a nation nor an individual can surrender conscience to another’s keeping.
Theodore Roosevelt

The pacifist is as surely a traitor to his country and to humanity as is the most brutal wrongdoer.
Theodore Roosevelt

This idea of weapons of mass exterminations utterly horrible and is something which no one with one spark of humanity can tolerate. I will not pretend to obey a government which is organizing a mass massacre of mankind.
Bertrand Russell

Peace is more precious than a piece of land.
Anwar Sadat

Peace is rarely denied to the peaceful.
Johann Friedrich Von Schiller

When the wish for peace is genuine, the means for finding it is giving in a form each mind that seeks for it in honesty can understand.
Helen Schucman

There are weapons that are simply thoughts. For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy.
Rod Serling

A peace above all earthly dignities, a still and quiet conscience.
William Shakespeare

The wise man… if he would live at peace with others, he will bear and forbear.
Samuel Smiles

Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.
Baruch Benedict de Spinoza

Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace. Where these is hatred, let me sow love.
St. Francis of Assisi

To many men… the miasma of peace seems more suffocating than the bracing air of war.
George Steiner

Wars begin in the minds of men, and in those minds, love and compassion would have built the defenses of peace.
U. Thant

Peace is the one condition of survival in this nuclear age.
Adlai E. Stevenson

Peace is achieved by accepting the things you’re not willing to change and changing the things your not willing to accept.
Marilyn Suttle

War and finance

They make a wilderness and call it peace.
Publius Cornelius Tacitus

I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.
The Holy Bible Source: John 16.33

Seek peace, and pursue it.
The Holy Bible Source: Proverbs 34:14

The peace makers shall be called the children of God.
The Holy Bible

They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
The Holy Bible Source: Isaiah 2:4

Think not I came to send peace on the earth; I came not to send peace but a sword.
The Holy Bible

Those who love thy law have great peace, and nothing causes them to stumble.
The Holy Bible Source: Psalms 119:165

Turn from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it.
The Holy Bible Source: Psalms 34:14

When a person’s ways please the Lord, he makes even his enemies to be at peace with them.
The Holy Bible

Let us not be justices of the peace, but angels of peace.
St. Theresa of Lisieux

The practice of peace and reconciliation is one of the most vital and artistic of human actions.
Thich Nhat Hanh

Peace is the happy natural state of man; war is corruption and disgrace.
James Thomson

I would rather have peace in the world than be President.
Harry S. Truman

It is understanding that gives us an ability to have peace. When we understand the other fellow’s viewpoint, and he understands ours, then we can sit down and work out our differences.
Harry S. Truman

Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed.
UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization)

If you wish for peace be ready for war.
Author Unknown

Maintain peace with men, war with their vices.
Author Unknown

Peace is that brief glorious moment in history when everybody stands around reloading.
Author Unknown

Peace is the deliberate adjustment of my life to the will of God.
Author Unknown

Peace may cost as much as war, but it is a better buy.
Author Unknown

Peace won by the compromise of principles is a short-lived achievement.
Author Unknown

The best way to end a war is not to begin it.
Author Unknown

Two things rob people of their peace of mind: work unfinished and work not yet begun.
Author Unknown

When we can’t find peace in ourselves it is vain to look for it elsewhere.
Author Unknown

When we are willing to make peace within ourselves, and peace with the environment in which we live and peace with each other and the animals we love and peace with the world so there are no wars, we will begin to understand how blessed we humans really are while we’re on this earth and among each other and the more we strive for this Peace on Earth the more we will leave Paradise behind for those that come after us.
Brenda Vaccaro

There is nothing so lovely and enduring in the regions which surround us, above and below, as the lasting peace of a mind centered in God.
Yoga Vasishtha

Observe good faith and justice toward all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all.
George Washington

To be prepared for war is one of the most effective means of preserving peace.
George Washington

Peace hath higher tests of manhood than battle ever knew.
John Greenleaf Whittier

Peace is not God’s gift to his creatures. It is our gift to each other.
Elie Wiesel

Peace is our gift to each other.
Elie Wiesel

It must be peace without victory; only a peace between equals can last.
Woodrow T. Wilson

There is a price which is too great to pay for peace, and that price can be put in one word. One cannot pay the price of self-respect.
Woodrow T. Wilson

We can best help you to prevent war not by repeating your words and following your methods but by finding new words and creating new methods.
Virginia Woolf

Thinking about interior peace destroys interior peace. The patient who constantly feels his pulse is not getting any better.
Hubert Van Zeller

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The post War and peace quotes first appeared on The World of English.

Christmas poems

Carl William Brown — Wed, 24 Dec 2025 10:38:55 +0000

Christmas poems for a merry atmosphere

Christmas poems for a magic holiday atmosphere, to enlighten and warm up your festive time by English-culture.com blog and Carl William Brown. Merry Christmas!

Christmas tries to renew our hope, reminding us of what is dearest to our hearts, but the season also awakens our childhood memories and therefore Christmas has the poetic power of enphasizing in our mind the spiritual memories of what is drammaticaly already passed away, of what is tragigally lost for ever and will never come back again. That’s why its atmosphere is a mixture of joy and sadness, and that’s why is very useful to remember this Latin quote, in tristitia hilaris, in hilaritate tristis.
Carl William Brown

Let Every Day Be Christmas

Christmas is forever, not for just one day,
for loving, sharing, giving, are not to put away
like bells and lights and tinsel, in some box upon a shelf.
The good you do for others is good you do yourself.

Peace on Earth, good will to men,
kind thoughts and words of cheer,
are things we should use often
and not just once a year.

Remember too the Christ-child, grew up to be a man;
to hide him in a cradle, is not our dear Lord’s plan.
So keep the Christmas spirit, share it with others far and near,
from week to week and month to month, throughout the entire year!

Norman Wesley Brooks

Where are the children who haven’t got their Christmas tree
with silver snow, fairy lights
and chocolate fruits?
Hurry up, hurry up, gathering,
We go in Chritmas trees land,
I know where it is.

Gianni Rodari

Whose heart doth hold the Christmas glow
Hath little need of Mistletoe;
Who bears a smiling grace of mien
Need waste no time on wreaths of green;
Whose lips have words of comfort spread
Needs not the holly – berries red –
His very presence scatters wide
The spirit of the Christmastide.

John Kendrick Bangs

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
there were no rootless Christmas trees
hung with candycanes and breakable stars
Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
there were no gilded Christmas trees
and no tinsel Christmas trees
and no tinfoil Christmas trees
and no pink plastic Christmas trees
and no gold Christmas trees
and no black Christmas trees
and no powderblue Christmas trees
hung with electric candles
and encircled by tin electric trains
and clever cornball relatives

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

It was the calm and silent night!
Seven hundred years and fifty-three
Had Rome been growing up to might
And now was queen of land and sea.
No sound was heard of clashing wars,
Peace brooded o’er the hushed domain;
Apollo, Pallas, Jove and Mars,
Held undisturbed their ancient reign,
In the solemn midnight,
Centuries ago.

Alfred Domett

It is the Christmas time:
And up and down ‘twixt heaven and earth,
In glorious grief and solemn mirth,
The shining angels climb.

Dinah Maria Mulock

I love the Christmas-tide, and yet,
I notice this, each year I live;
I always like the gifts I get,
But how I love the gifts I give!

Carolyn Wells

‘Tis blessed to bestow, and yet,
Could we bestow the gifts we get,
And keep the ones we give away,
How happy were our Christmas day!

Carolyn Wells

The earth has grown old with its burden of care,
But at Christmas it is always young;
The heart of the jewel burns lustrous and fair,
And its soul, full of music, breaks forth on the air
When the song of the angels is sung.
It is coming, Old Earth, it is coming tonight!
On the snowflakes which cover thy sod
The feet of the Christ-child fall gentle and white,
And the voice of the Christ-child tells out with delight
That mankind are the children of God.

Phillips Brooks

Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow, and, driving o’er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,
And veils the farmhouse at the garden’s end.
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier’s feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Let Christmas not become a thing
Merely of merchant’s trafficking,
Of tinsel, bell and holly wreath
And surface pleasure, but beneath
The childish glamour, let us find
Nourishment for soul and mind.
Let us follow kinder ways
Through our teeming human maze,
And help the age of peace to come
From a Dreamer’s martyrdom.

Madeline Morse

Christmas Holidays

Along the Woodford road there comes a noise
Of wheels, and Mr. Rounding’s neat post-chaise
Struggles along, drawn by a pair of bays,
With Reverend Mr. Crow and six small boys,
Who ever and anon declare their joys
With trumping horns and juvenile huzzas,
At going home to spend their Christmas days,
And changing learning’s pains for pleasure’s toys.
Six weeks elapse, and down the Woodford way
A heavy coach drags six more heavy souls,
But no glad urchins shout, no trumpets bray,
The carriage makes a halt, the gate-bell tolls,
And little boys walk in as dull and mum
As six new scholars to the Deaf and Dumb!

Thomas Hood

A White Christmas

‘Twas the night before christmas.
With a blanket of white.
That covered the earth all through the night.
The trees sparkled like diamonds.
With a glitter so bright.
That each little twinkle made its own christmas light.
A hope and a prayer a white christmas would be.
Awaiting the dawn so all could see.
The beauty and joy a white christmas does bring.
To the holiday season as carolers sing.
For twas the night before Christmas.
God answered your prayer.
With a blanket of white.
Placed with God’s loving care.”

Carla Jean Laglia Esely

Christmas poetical decorated atmosphere

Christmas At The Orphanage

But if they’d give us toys and twice the stuff most
parents splurge on the average kid, orphans, I submit, need more than enough;
in fact, stacks wrapped with our names nearly hid
the tree: these sparkling allotments yearly
guaranteed a lack of – what? – family? –

I knew exactly what it was I missed as we were lined up number rank and file:
to share my pals’ tearing open their piles
meant sealing the self, the child that wanted
to scream at all You stole those gifts from me;
whose birthday is worth such words? The wish-lists
they’d made us write out in May lay granted
against starred branches. I said I’m sorry.

Bill Knott

Christmas Past

Oh happy days, the snow fell over-night,
we have a white Christmas in our sight.
Only a few more days and nights,
Christmas will shine bright of white.

Remember those beautiful Christmas Eves,
when we gathered round our colorful trees.
Remember when we caroled down the street,
sang Christmas songs oh so sweet.

Memories are precious let’s not forget,
don’t do anything you might regret.
Christmas is the time of year to share,
to treasure family far and near.

This Christmas with the lights shining bright,
reflecting God’s blanket of white.
Sing sweet songs in memory,
past Christmas’s history.

Melvina Germain

Read also our other posts on Christmas ;

Christmas quotes ;

Best Christmas songs ;

Christmas tree origin and quotes ;

Traditional Christmas Carols ;

Christmas markets in England ;

Christmas markets in America ;

Christmas jokes ;

Christmas cracker jokes ;

An Essasy on Christmas by Chesterton ;

Great quotes on family and relatives

The post Christmas poems first appeared on The World of English.

Cristmas carols

Carl William Brown — Sat, 20 Dec 2025 10:52:23 +0000

Christmas Carols Merry Atmosphere

Christmas Carols, traditional popular songs and poems with videos, music and decorations, html or pdf version, holy offered by the World of English, the Daimon Club, the Fortattack crew, Aforismi celebri and Carl William Brown.

Twas the Night before Christmas Poem. Clement Clarke Moore (1779 – 1863) wrote the poem Twas the night before Christmas also called “A Visit from St. Nicholas” in 1822. It is now the tradition in many American families to read the poem every Christmas Eve.

The poem ‘Twas the night before Christmas’ has redefined our image of Christmas and Santa Claus. Prior to the creation of the story of ‘Twas the night before Christmas’ St. Nicholas, the patron saint of children, had never been associated with a sleigh or reindeers!

Clement Moore, the author of the poem Twas the night before Christmas, was a reticent man and it is believed that a family friend, Miss H. Butler, sent a copy of the poem to the New York Sentinel who published the poem. The condition of publication was that the author of Twas the night before Christmas was to remain anonymous.

Twas the Night before Christmas Poem

Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St Nicholas soon would be there.

The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads.
And mamma in her ‘kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had just settled our brains for a long winter’s nap.

When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.

The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow
Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below.
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a miniature sleigh, and eight tinny reindeer.

With a little old driver, so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment it must be St Nick.
More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name!

“Now Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen!
On, Comet! On, Cupid! on, on Donner and Blitzen!
To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!
Now dash away! Dash away! Dash away all!”

As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky.
So up to the house-top the coursers they flew,
With the sleigh full of Toys, and St Nicholas too.

And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof
The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.
As I drew in my head, and was turning around,
Down the chimney St Nicholas came with a bound.

He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,
And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot.
A bundle of Toys he had flung on his back,
And he looked like a peddler, just opening his pack.

His eyes-how they twinkled! his dimples how merry!
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,
And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow.

The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath.
He had a broad face and a little round belly,
That shook when he laughed, like a bowlful of jelly!

He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself!
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread.

He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
And filled all the stockings, then turned with a jerk.
And laying his finger aside of his nose,
And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose!

He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew like the down of a thistle.
But I heard him exclaim, ‘ere he drove out of sight,
“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night!”

Silent Night

Silent night! holy night!
All is calm, all is bright
round yon virgin mother and child,
Holy infant so tender and mild,
sleep in heavenly peace!

Silent night! holy night!
Shepherds quake at the sight;
glories stream from heaven afar,
heavenly hosts sing Alleluia,
Christ, the Saviour, is born!

Silent night! holy night!
Son of God, love’s pure light
radiant beams from thy holy face,
with the dawn of redeeming grace,
Jesus, Lord at thy birth.

All I Want For Christmas

Everybody stops
and stares at me
These two teeth are
gone as you can see
I don’t know just who
to blame for this catastrophe!
But my one wish on Christmas Eve
is as plain as it can be!

All I want for Christmas
is my two front teeth,
my two front teeth,
see my two front teeth!

Gee, if I could only
have my two front teeth,
then I could be with you
“Merry Christmas.”
It seems so long since I could say,
“Sister Susie sitting on a thistle!”

Gosh oh gee, how happy I’d be,
if I could only whistle (thhhh)

All I want for Christmas
is my two front teeth,
my two front teeth,
see my two front teeth.
Gee, if I could only
have my two front teeth,
then I could wish you
“Merry Christmas.”

Deck the Halls

Deck the halls with boughs of holly
Fa la la la la la la la la
‘Tis the season to be jolly,
Fa la la la la la la la la
Don we now our gay apparel,
Fa la la la la la la la la
Troll the ancient Yuletide carol,
Fa la la la la la la la la.

Fast away the old year passes,
Fa la la la la la la la la
Hail the new, ye lads and lasses,
Fa la la la la la la la la
Sing we joyous all together,
Fa la la la la la la la la
Heedless of the wind and weather,
Fa la la la la la la la la.

Here Comes Santa Claus

Here comes Santa Claus!
Here comes Santa Claus!
Right down Santa Claus Lane!
Vixen and Blitzen and all his reindeer
are pulling on the reins.
Bells are ringing, children singing;
All is merry and bright.
Hang your stockings and say your prayers,
‘Cause Santa Claus comes tonight.

Here comes Santa Claus!
Here comes Santa Claus!
Right down Santa Claus Lane!
He’s got a bag that is filled with toys
for the boys and girls again.
Hear those sleigh bells jingle jangle,
What a beautiful sight.
Jump in bed, cover up your head,
‘Cause Santa Claus comes tonight.

Frosty The Snowman

Frosty the snowman was a jolly happy soul
With a corncob pipe and a button nose
and two eyes made out of coal

Frosty the snowman is a fairy tale they say
He was made of snow but the children
know how he came to life one day
There must have been some magic in that
old silk hat they found
For when they placed it on his head
he began to dance around

Frosty the snowman
was alive as he could be
And the children say he could laugh
and play just the same as you and me
Thumpetty thump thump
thumpety thump thump
Look at Frosty go
Thumpetty thump thump
thumpety thump thump
Over the hills of snow

Frosty the snowman knew
the sun was hot that day
So he said
“Let’s run and
we’ll have some fun
now before I melt away”
Down to the village
with a broomstick in his hand
Running here and there all
around the square saying
Catch me if you can
He led them down the streets of town
right to the traffic cop
And he only paused a moment when
he heard him holler “Stop!”

For Frosty the snow man
had to hurry on his way
But he waved goodbye saying
“Don’t you cry
I’ll be back again some day”
Thumpetty thump thump
thumpety thump thump
Look at Frosty go
Thumpetty thump thump
thumpety thump thump
Over the hills of snow

Merry Christmas Carol Postcard

Jingle Bells

Dashing through the snow
In a one-horse open sleigh
Through the fields we go
Laughing all the way.
Bells on bob-tail ring
Making spirits bright
What fun it is to ride and sing
A sleighing song tonight.

chorus: Jingle bells, jingle bells
Jingle all the way,
Oh what fun it is to ride
In a one-horse open sleigh, O
Jingle bells, jingle bells
Jingle all the way,
Oh what fun it is to ride
In a one-horse open sleigh.

A day or two ago
I thought I’d take a ride
And soon Miss Fanny Bright
Was seated by my side;
The horse was lean and lank
Misfortune seemed his lot,
We ran into a drifted bank
And there we got upsot.

A day or two ago
The story I must tell
I went out on the snow
And on my back I fell;
A gent was riding by
In a one-horse open sleigh
He laughed at me as
I there sprawling laid
But quickly drove away.

Now the ground is white,
Go it while you’re young,
Take the girls along
And sing this sleighing song.
Just bet a bob-tailed bay,
Two-forty as his speed,
Hitch him to an open sleigh
and crack! You’ll take the lead.

I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day

I heard the bells on Christmas day
Their old familiar carols play
And mild and sweet the words repeat,
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

I thought how as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had roll’d along th’ unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

And in despair I bow’d my head:
“There is no peace on earth,” I said,
“For hate is strong, and mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.”

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail,
With peace on earth, good will to men.”

‘Til ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime, a chant sublime,
Of peace on earth, good will to men!

Jolly Old Saint Nicholas

Jolly old Saint Nicholas,
Lean your ear this way!
Don’t you tell a single soul
What I’m going to say;
Christmas Eve is coming soon;
Now, you dear old man,
Whisper what you’ll bring to me;
Tell me if you can.

When the clock is striking twelve,
When I’m fast asleep,
Down the chimney broad and black,
With your pack you’ll creep;
All the stockings you will find
Hanging in a row;
Mine will be the shortest one,
You’ll be sure to know.

Johnny wants a pair of skates;
Susy wants a dolly;
Nellie wants a story book;
She thinks dolls are folly;
As for me, my little brain
Isn’t very bright;
Choose for me, old Santa Claus,
What you think is right.

See the decorated complete Carols page with also the PDF file

Thoughts and reflections on family and relatives

Carl William Brown — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 13:14:53 +0000

Thoughts and reflections on family and relatives

Thoughts and reflections on family and relatives by various authors from different eras to understand and meditate on the fundamental cell of our societies.

The family is both the fundamental unit of society as well as the root of culture. It … is a perpetual source of encouragement, advocacy, assurance, and emotional refueling that empowers a child to venture with confidence into the greater world and to become all that he can be.
Marianne E. Neifert

If I had been born into a very wealthy family, I would have written long novels, but accustomed to having to economize, I have developed a certain mastery of simple, short writing, so I can leave the ramblings and elaborate nonsense to those better than me.
Carl William Brown

Of all our social institutions, the family is perhaps the one with which we are most familiar. As we proceed through our lives, our experiences within the family give rise to some of our strongest and most intense feelings. Within the family context lies a paradox, however: although most of us hope for love and support within the family — a haven in a heartless world, so to speak — the family can also be a place of violence and abuse.
Marilyn Poole

What until now has been considered a “normal” family, made up of a father, a mother, and a number of children, has in recent years increasingly begun to be viewed as one among several options, which can no longer claim to be the only or even superior form of ordering human relationships. The Judeo-Christian view of marriage and the family with its roots in the Hebrew Scriptures has to a significant extent been replaced with a set of values that prizes human rights, self-fulfillment, and pragmatic utility on an individual and social level. It can rightly be said that marriage and the family are insitutions under siege in our world today, and that with marriage and the family, our very civilization is in crisis.
Andreas J. Kostenberger

In truth a family is what you make it. It is made strong, not by number of heads counted at the dinner table, but by the rituals you help family members create, by the memories you share, by the commitment of time, caring, and love you show to one another, and by the hopes for the future you have as individuals and as a unit.
Marge Kennedy

Every family has a story that it tells itself, that it passes on to the children and grandchildren. The story grows over the years, mutates, some parts are sharpened, others dropped, and there is often debate about what really happened. But even with these different sides of the same story, there is still agreement that this is the family story. And in the absence of other narratives, it becomes the flagpole that the family hangs its identity from.
A.M. Homes

If the only alternatives for our young people are the stadium, discos, TV, church, video games, social media, family, school, and the painful world of work, then perhaps we can better understand why some of them feel the desire to escape, even at the cost of ruining their lives forever.
Carl William Brown

Focus on your marriage. Because that’s the nucleus of the home, whatever you do to restore its health and strength will naturally restore what’s broken among the other relationships. If you have no children yet, this will make a comfortable nest for them to begin life well. If you have children, the changes you make in your marriage will affect the rest of the household more quickly and dramatically than you think.
Charles R. Swindoll

The family. We were a strange little band of characters trudging through life sharing diseases and toothpaste, coveting one another’s desserts, hiding shampoo, borrowing money, locking each other out of our rooms, inflicting pain and kissing to heal it in the same instant, loving, laughing, defending, and trying to figure out the common thread that bound us all together.
Erma Bombeck

The family is an early expedient and in many ways irrational. If the race had developed a special sexless class to be nurses, pedagogues, and slaves, like the workers among ants and bees, then the family would have been unnecessary. Such a division of labor would doubtless have involved evils of its own, but it would have obviated some drags and vexations proper to the family.
George Santayana

Marx was convinced that in the final phase of the bourgeoisie, the growing mass proletarianization would destroy the family, but he couldn’t say exactly what would replace it. These days, it’s easier to formulate hypotheses on this subject, and we suggest one: prostitutes.
Carl William Brown

All my family, my blood, is mixed up now. They don’t even all know each other. I just hope they don’t never hate or fight each other, not knowin who they are. Cause all these people livin are brothers and sisters and cousins. All these beautiful different colors! We!… We the human Family. God says so! FAMILY!
J. California Cooper

The family is the basic cell of government: it is where we are trained to believe that we are human beings or that we are chattel, it is where we are trained to see the sex and race divisions and become callous to injustice even if it is done to ourselves, to accept as biological a full system of authoritarian government.
Gloria Steinem

A farmer who had a quarrelsome family called his sons and told them to lay a bunch of sticks before him. Then, after laying the sticks parallel to one another and binding them, he challenged his sons, one after one, to pick up the bundle and break it. They all tried, but in vain. Then, untying the bundle, he gave them the sticks to break one by one. This they did with the greatest ease. Then said the father, “Thus, my sons, as long as you remain united, you are a match for anything, but differ and separate, and you are undone.”
Aesop

Love, by reason of its passion, destroys the in-between which relates us to and separates us from others. As long as its spell lasts, the only in-between which can insert itself between two lovers is the child, love’s own product. The child, this in-between to which the lovers now are related and which they hold in common, is representative of the world in that it also separates them; it is an indication that they will insert a new world into the existing world. Through the child, it is as though the lovers return to the world from which their love had expelled them. But this new worldliness, the possible result and the only possibly happy ending of a love affair, is, in a sense, the end of love, which must either overcome the partners anew or be transformed into another mode of belonging together.
Hannah Arendt

A young Italian girl, even a good-looking one, would rather be slaughtered by two Nigerians than be with her family, at school, at the oratory, at church, at work, in the community – well, that says a lot about the rotten state of our society!
Carl William Brown

Accidents will occur in the best-regulated families; and in families not regulated by that pervading influence which sanctifies while it enhances… in short, by the influence of woman, in the lofty character of wife, they may be expected with confidence, and must be borne with philosophy.
Charles Dickens

The only perfect love to be found on earth is not sexual love, which is riddled with hostility and insecurity, but the wordless commitment of families, which takes as its model mother-love. This is not to say that fathers have no place, for father-love, with its driving for self-improvement and discipline, is also essential to survival, but that uncorrected father-love, father-love as it were practiced by both parents, is a way to annihilation.
Germaine Greer

The proliferation of support groups suggests to me that too many Americans are growing up in homes that do not contain a grandmother. A home without a grandmother is like an egg without salt and Helpists know it. They have jumped into the void left by the disappearance of morbid old ladies from the bosom of the American family.
Florence E. King

As to the family, I have never understood how that fits in with the other ideals — or, indeed, why it should be an ideal at all. A group of closely related persons living under one roof; it is a convenience, often a necessity, sometimes a pleasure, sometimes the reverse; but who first exalted it as admirable, an almost religious ideal?
Rose Macaulay

With a new familiarity and a flesh-creeping “homeliness” entirely of this unreal, materialistic world, where all “sentiment” is coarsely manufactured and advertised in colossal sickly captions, disguised for the sweet tooth of a monstrous baby called “the Public,” the family as it is, broken up on all hands by the agency of feminist and economic propaganda, reconstitutes itself in the image of the state.
Wyndham Lewis

By profession, I am a soldier and take pride in that fact. But I am prouder – infinitely prouder – to be a father. A soldier destroys in order to build; the father only builds, never destroys. The one has the potentiality of death; the other embodies creation and life. While the hordes of death are mighty, the battalions of life are mightier still. It is my hope that my son, when I am gone, will remember me not from the battlefield but in the home repeating with him our simple daily prayer, “Our Father Who Art in Heaven.”
Douglas Macarthur

The Family is the Country of the heart. There is an angel in the Family who, by the mysterious influence of grace, of sweetness, and of love, renders the fulfillment of duties less wearisome, sorrows less bitter. The only pure joys unmixed with sadness which it is given to man to taste upon earth are, thanks to this angel, the joys of the Family.
Giuseppe Mazzini

But if we live in a global world, in a planetary village, and if we’ve all long been brothers and sisters and ours is one big family, then why are there still borders and illegal immigrants?
Carl William Brown

One of the oddest features of western Christianized culture is its ready acceptance of the myth of the stable family and the happy marriage. We have been taught to accept the myth not as an heroic ideal, something good, brave, and nearly impossible to fulfil, but as the very fiber of normal life. Given most families and most marriages, the belief seems admirable but foolhardily.
Jonathan Raban

Who knows why Italy, the cradle and homeland of the Vatican, Catholicism, the Holy Family, and the Pope’s sermons on the mystical value of procreation, has long had a zero fertility rate?
Carl William Brown

In one family, all goes by two and two. If a member of it has any interest, he or she will confide it to some one other; but the rest know nothing. In another family, all feel what touches one; nothing is kept dark from the father and mother, brothers and sisters–all share. This family habit is by far the better, it strengthens the tie between the members, and makes the home one home.
Charles Buxton

There is one class of men who from time to time have taken a keen and practical interest in the constitution of the Family, and they are the Statesmen. They have realized how intimately the welfare of the State depends upon the influence and nature of the Families from which it is constituted; and they have endeavoured that the State in turn should mould and influence the Family to its own purposes.
Helen Dendy Bosanquet

The whore is nothing more than a sordid image of a society that exploits parents and sells its sons to its daughters. A sublime embodiment of poverty, incompetence, and stupidity, she is one of those professionals who, despite not knowing how to do anything, earn a lot. This figure is the symbol of the incestuous ignorance of a world that rapes its victims, charging them handsomely, and despises them with respectability, at least until they too begin to reek of that excremental well-being, which is the most fetishistic characteristic of an increasingly masochistic reality. Mediocre beings who, as Shakespeare said, know how to deceive many men only to end up miserably thanks to the self-interested attentions of a single petty individual.
Carl William Brown

In retrospect, it was only a matter of time before the Family Dinner passed into history and fast foods took over. I knew its days were numbered the day our youngest propped my mouth open with a fork and yelled into it, “I want a cheeseburger and two fries and get it right this time.” I just didn’t serve meals with show business pizzazz.
Erma Bombeck

Love, by reason of its passion, destroys the in-between which relates us to and separates us from others. As long as its spell lasts, the only in-between which can insert itself between two lovers is the child, love’s own product. The child, this in-between, to which the lovers now are related and which they hold in common, is representative of the world in that it also separates them; it is an indication that they will insert a new world into the existing world. Through the child, it is as though the lovers return to the world from which their love had expelled them. But this new worldliness, the possible result and the only possibly happy ending of a love affair, is, in a sense, the end of love, which must either overcome the partners anew or be transformed into another mode of belonging together.
Hannah Arendt

Forms of family life vary from one society to another. There are no universal rules about who is considered to be “in” a family, who lives with whom, who is socially allowed to have sex with whom, who shares economic resources and who has responsibility for children.
Marilyn Poole

Imitation both unconscious and conscious is par excellence the educational method of the family. It is plain that a considerable part of the adaptation of living beings to their environment, i.e., of beings that are born plastic, is passed on from generation to generation through imitation. Were this not so, much if not all of the road traversed by one generation would have to be travelled by the next generation from the very beginning and without short-cuts. Consequently there would be little chance for the novel adaptation, the propitious individual variation, that constitutes progress.
Elsie Worthington Clews Parsons

Rampant nostalgia for the modern family system, or more precisely, for an idealized version of a 1950s Ozzie and Harriet image of the family, has become an increasingly potent ideological force in the United States, with milder versions evident in Canada and England. Fundamentalist Christians and right-wing Republicans spearheaded the profamily movement that abetted the Reagan “revolution” of the 1980s. By the 1994 electoral season, however, even President Clinton had embraced the ideology of an explicitly centrist campaign for family values led by a small group of social scientists. This ongoing campaign portrays family breakdown as the primary source of social malaise in the United States, blaming the decline of the married-couple family for everything from crime, violence, and declining educational standards to poverty, drug abuse, and sexually transmitted disease.
Judith Stacey

Whoever is acquainted with the cruel injustice and unjust subordination frequently manifested in the family, whoever sees matters of lasting and supreme importance relative to the beginning and continuance of the family determined by momentary fancy or unreasoning passion, cannot but desire the construction of a social fabric in which reason may rule with perfect justice.
Charles Franklin Thwing

There are certain functions that the family performs. In the first place the family provides society with an orderly means of reproduction, while at the same time the norms of marriage control the potentially disruptive forces of sexuality. Second, the family provides physical and economic support for the child during the early years of dependence. The child receives its primary socialization in the family, learning the essential ideas and values required for adult life.
Adrian Wilson

Thus in modern times the family drifted on to the high seas, and the world of metaphor such a voyage suggests started to fix itself in the vocabulary of social analysis. Had the winds always blown so strongly as now? people would ask. Had the currents always been so powerful, the family so little able to navigate a separate course?
Edward Shorter

The great want in family life that strikes me is this, that there are so few tête-à-têtes. You live on from year’s end to year’s end, surrounded by those whom you love, and chatting together; but it is rare to be thrown alone with any one individual, and have really intimate talk with him or her. Yet the difference in value is immense between mere social chat, and that mingling of mind with mind, which is impossible if others are by. But the real fact is, that unless some effort is made for it, or unless circumstances are unusually favourable, the very members of the same family live, one might say, on parallel lines, without ever touching.
Charles Buxton

The number one need in all people is the need for acceptance, the need to experience a sense of belonging to something and someone. The need for acceptance is more powerful in your family than anywhere else…. If that need is not met by your family, trust me, your kids will go elsewhere to seek it in order to find approval and acceptance.
Phil Mcgraw

One of the oddest features of western Christianized culture is its ready acceptance of the myth of the stable family and the happy marriage. We have been taught to accept the myth not as an heroic ideal, something good, brave, and nearly impossible to fulfil, but as the very fibre of normal life. Given most families and most marriages, the belief seems admirable but foolhardy.
Jonathan Raban

Every family had its own peculiar cult, to which no stranger was ever admitted, and which alone could appease and satisfy the gods of that family. The cult was handed down from father to son, from generation to generation, and could not be lost without condemning the whole series of ancestors to eternal misery.
Helen Dendy Bosanquet

The family indeed is dead, if what we mean by it is the modern family system in which units comprised of male breadwinner and female homemaker, married couples, and their offspring dominate the land. But its ghost, the ideology of the family, survives to haunt the consciousness of all those who refuse to confront it. It is time to perform a social autopsy on the corpse of the modern family system so that we may try to lay its troublesome spirit to rest.
Judith Stacey

Of all our social institutions, the family is perhaps the one with which we are most familiar. As we proceed through our lives, our experiences within the family give rise to some of our strongest and most intense feelings. Within the family context lies a paradox, however: although most of us hope for love and support within the family – a haven in a heartless world, so to speak–the family can also be a place of violence and abuse.
Marilyn Poole

Governments and politicians use the family as an indicator of the health and strength of social life. Politicians fear that any weakening of family life will in some way sap the vitality of national life…. The family is also important to businessmen. It is one of the major purchasing groups of our consumer society.
Adrian Wilson

As to the family, I have never understood how that fits in with the other ideals–or indeed, why it should be an ideal at all. A group of closely related persons living under one roof; it is a convenience, often a necessity, sometimes a pleasure, sometimes the reverse; but who first exalted it as admirable, an almost religious ideal?
Rose Macaulay

If we could know as intimately as we know our more immediate parents the long line of ancestors through whom the family spirit has passed on its way to us, we should probably become fatalists in face of the apparently overwhelming evidence that there is nothing in us that has not come to us from, or at least through, the Family. Family portrait galleries are a striking confirmation of the persistence of characteristics which ultimately govern the fortunes of successive generations.
Helen Dendy Bosanquet

I wanted to go to a place where you were important and people listened to what you had to say. Mothering hadn’t done that … and yet … wouldn’t it be ironic if my turf yielded the most important commodity being grown today? A family? A crop of children, seeded by two people, nourished by love, watered by tears, and in eighteen or twenty years harvested into worthwhile human beings to go through the process again.
Erma Bombeck

We all hold on to some image of the family we want, based one way or another on the family we had. Lots of people are thrilled about the families they came from, others couldn’t get away fast enough. Most people fall into that vast middle ground: great affection mixed with a few ideas for improvement. A couple of things they wish could have perhaps been done differently.
Paul Reiser

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Thoughts and reflections on family and relatives

The post Thoughts and reflections on family and relatives first appeared on The World of English.

Great quotes on family and relatives

Carl William Brown — Thu, 18 Dec 2025 13:59:15 +0000

Great quotes on family and relatives

Great quotes on family and relatives, a collection of authorial aphorisms on the fundamental core of society, even if on the whole it is not always idyllic.

A family in harmony will prosper in everything.
Chinese Proverb

There are only two families in the world, the haves and the have-nots.
Miguel De Cervantes

The family is the school of duties… founded on love.
Felix Adler

The babe at first feeds upon the mother’s bosom, but it is always on her heart.
Henry Ward Beecher

Close relatives, just like shoes, are the ones that cause the most trouble.
Carl William Brown

A writer is always unwelcome at the family table. Because we notice things. And then we use them.
Elizabeth Hardwick

Other things may change us, but we start and end with family.
Anthony Brandt

The parents age must be remembered, both for joy and anxiety.
Confucius

The awe and dread with which the untutored savage contemplates his mother-in-law are amongst the most familiar facts of anthropology.
James G. Frazer

The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other’s life. Rarely do members of one family grow up under the same roof.
Richard Bach

The family spirit has rendered man carnivorous.
Francis Picabia

All happy families resemble each other, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
Leo tolstoy

He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.
Francis Bacon

Cruel is the strife of brothers.
Aristotle

To be generalists, we could say that we are all children of God, that is, of an unknown father.
Carl William Brown

Family traditions counter alienation and confusion. They help us define who we are; they provide something steady, reliable and safe in a confusing world.
Susan Lieberman

Parents and children seldom act in concert: each child endeavors to appropriate the esteem or fondness of the parents, and the parents, with yet less temptation, betray each other to their children.
Samuel Johnson

The strength of a family, like the strength of an army, is in its loyalty to each other.
Mario Puzo

Family … the home of all social evil, a charitable institution for comfortable women, an anchorage for house-fathers, and a hell for children.
August Strindberg

The family uses people, not for what they are, nor for what they are intended to be, but for what it wants them for? its own uses. It thinks of them not as what God has made them, but as the something which it has arranged that they shall be.
Florence Nightingale

The roaring of the wind is my wife and the stars through the window pane are my children. The mighty abstract idea I have of beauty in all things stifles the more divided and minute domestic happiness.
John Keats

Man is certainly an animal at least as stupid as his lower relatives, only he is also dangerously and destructively vain.
Carl William Brown

Family values are a little like family vacations -? subject to changeable weather and remembered more fondly with the passage of time. Though it rained all week at the beach, it’s often the momentary rainbows that we remember.
Leslie Dreyfous

The family you come from isn’t as important as the family you’re going to have.
Ring Lardner

So much of what is best in us is bound up in our love of family, that it remains the measure of our stability because it measures our sense of loyalty. All other pacts of love or fear derive from it and are modeled upon it.
Haniel Long

He that loves not his wife and children feeds a lioness at home, and broods a nest of sorrows.
Jeremy Taylor

All happy families resemble one another; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
Count Leo Tolstoy

Family is the most important thing in the world.
Princess Diana

A mother’s love is fashioned after God’s enduring love. It is endless and unfailing like the love of Him above.
Helen Steiner Rice

I would rather start a family than finish one.
Don Marquis

Nobody has ever before asked the nuclear family to live all by itself in a box the way we do. With no relatives, no support, we’ve put it in an impossible situation.
Margaret Mead

Every man sees in his relatives, and especially in his cousins, a series of grotesque caricatures of himself.
H. L. Mencken

In every dispute between parent and child, both cannot be right, but they may be, and usually are, both wrong. It is this situation which gives family life its peculiar hysterical charm.
Isaac Rosenfeld

At funerals, the dead are the ones who feel better; at least they avoid the priests’ bullshit and the relatives’ gossip.
Carl William Brown

Big sisters are the crab grass in the lawn of life.
Charles M. Schulz

Family quarrels are bitter things. They don’t go according to any rules. They’re not like aches or wounds; they’re more like splits in the skin that won’t heal because there’s not enough material.
F. Scott Fitzgerald

A family with an old person has a living treasure of gold.
Chinese Proverb

If the family were a boat, it would be a canoe that makes no progress unless everyone paddles.
Letty Cottin Pogrebin

Love makes a family.
Gigi Kaeser

A family is a place where minds come in contact with one another.
Buddha

If Mr. Vincent Price were to be co-starred with Miss Bette Davis in a story by Mr. Edgar Allan Poe directed by Mr. Roger Corman, it could not fully express the pent-up violence and depravity of a single day in the life of the average family.
Quentin Crisp

Families are about love overcoming emotional torture.
Matt Groening

I learned about the strength you can get from a close family life. I learned to keep going, even in bad times. I learned not to despair, even when my world was falling apart. I learned that there are no free lunches. And I learned the value of hard work.
Lee Iacocca

As the family goes, so goes the nation and so goes the whole world in which we live.
John Paul II

When I do something in my family because I really enjoy it, then my duty has become my pleasure. And it is a pleasure for all the people around me.
Dr. Jess Lair

Sisters are always drying their hair. Locked into rooms, alone, they pose at the mirror, shoulders bare, trying this way and that their hair, or fly importunate down the stair to answer the telephone.
Phyllis McGinley

There is not much less vexation in the government of a private family than in the managing of an entire state.
Michel Eyquem De Montaigne

Families are nothing other than the idolatry of duty.
Ann Oakley

In our family, as far as we are concerned, we were born and what happened before that is myth.
V. S. Pritchett

God, Country, and Family, but above all Money, these are the cornerstones of hypocrisy.
Carl William Brown

The family is one of nature’s masterpieces.
George Santayana

A family’s photograph album is generally about the extended family and, often, is all that remains of it.
Susan Sontag

The hatred of relatives is the most violent.
Publius Cornelius Tacitus

Adam was the luckiest man; he had no mother-in-law.
Mark Twain

Relations are simply a tedious pack of people who haven’t got the remotest knowledge of how to live, nor the smallest instinct about when to die.
Oscar Wilde

A woman can take care of the family. It takes a man to provide structure. To provide stability. Not that a woman can’t provide stability, I’m not saying that… It does take a father, though.
Tom Delay

Better a loving single-parent family than a ‘conventional’ family where the parents hate each other and the father is a demagogue.
Moby

Frankly, I’m fed up with politicians in Washington lecturing the rest of us about family values. Our families have values. But our government doesn’t.
Bill clinton

If your family tree does not fork, you might be a redneck.
Jeff Foxworthy

He didn’t dare to, because his father had a weak heart and habitually threatened to drop dead if anybody hurt his feelings. You may have noticed that people with weak hearts are the tyrants of English married life.
George Bernard Shaw

No matter how many communes anybody invents, the family always creeps back.
Margaret Mead

The holy restricted family: A loves B, somehow, and is loved back, one way or another! Neither of them gives a damn about the rest of the alphabet!
Carl William Brown

Family life is not a computer program that runs on its own; it needs continual input from everyone.
Neil Kurshan

Family is what grounds you.
Angelina Jolie

A close relative is one you see occasionally between family funerals.
Author Unknown

Our relatives are ours by chance, but we can choose our friends.
Jacques Delille

Lord, confound this surly sister, blight her brow with blotch and blister, cramp her larynx, lung and liver, in her guts a galling give her.
J. M. Synge

A friend who is near and dear may in time become as useless as a relative.
George Ade

Our notion of the perfect society embraces the family as its center and ornament, and this paradise is not secure until children appear to animate and complete the picture.
Amos Bronson Alcott

Rarely do members of the same family grow up under the same roof.
Richard Bach

You leave home to seek your fortune and, when you get it, you go home and share it with your family.
Anita Baker

There is no friendship, no love, like that of the parent for the child.
Henry Ward Beecher

You hear a lot of dialogue on the death of the American family. Families aren’t dying. They’re merging into big conglomerates.
Erma Bombeck

Never did I think that I became family entertainment.
Jimmy Buffet

Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.
George Burns

The family is the test of freedom; because the family is the only thing that the free man makes for himself and by himself.
Gilbert K. Chesterton

The parents age must be remembered, both for joy and anxiety.
Confucius

Parents: persons who spend half their time worrying how a child will turn out, and the rest of the time wondering when a child will turn in.
Ted Cook

Alternatives to marriage and the traditional family: cohabitation, communes, celibacy, vows, suicide…
Carl William Brown

The family is the nucleus of civilization.
William J. Durant

What a man sows, that shall he and his relations reap.
Clarissa Graves

Nor need we power or splendor, wide hall or lordly dome; the good, the true, the tender — these form the wealth of home.
Sarah J. Hale

The striking point about our model family is not simply the compete-compete, consume-consume style of life it urges us to follow. The striking point, in the face of all the propaganda, is how few Americans actually live this way.
Louise Kapp Howe

A good many family trees are shady.
Robert Elliott Gonzales

The Family is the Country of the heart.
Giuseppe Mazzini

Families aren’t easy to join. They’re like an exclusive country club where membership makes impossible demands and the dues for an outsider are exorbitant.
Erma Bombeck

There is little less trouble in governing a private family than a whole kingdom.
Michel Eyquem De Montaigne

Absence is one of the most useful ingredients of family life, and to dose it rightly is an art like any other.
Freya Stark

Family… the home of all social evil, a charitable institution for comfortable women, an anchorage for house — fathers, and a hell for children.
August J. Strindberg

Having a family is like having a bowling alley installed in your brain.
Martin Mull

Family life is too intimate to be preserved by the spirit of justice. It can be sustained by a spirit of love which goes beyond justice.
Reinhold Niebuhr

The family unit plays a critical role in our society and in the training of the generation to come.
Sandra Day O’Connor

Family likeness has often a deep sadness in it.
George Eliot

There is an interconnectedness among members that bonds the family, much like mountain climbers who rope themselves together when climbing a mountain, so that if someone should slip or need support, he’s held up by the others until he regains his footing.
Phil Mcgraw

Without a family, man, alone in the world, trembles with the cold.
André Maurois

Under any system of society … the family holds the future in its bosom.
Charles Franklin Thwing

For the Kennedys, politics was a family tradition; for the Holy Family, killing them was a tradition as well.
Carl William Brown

Woman is the salvation or destruction of the family. She carries its destinies in the folds of her mantle.
Henri-Frederic Amiel

Marriage is to family what legs are to a table.
Betty Jane Wylie

I have known more men destroyed by the desire to have wife and child and to keep them in comfort than I have seen destroyed by drink and harlots.
William Butler Yeats

I can’t help detesting my relations. I suppose it comes from the fact that none of us can stand other people having the same faults as ourselves.
Oscar Wilde

The difference between us is that my family begins with me, whereas yours ends with you.
Author Unknown

We are always too busy for our children; we never give them the time or interest they deserve. We lavish gifts upon them; but the most precious gift, our personal association, which means so much to them, we give grudgingly.
Mark Twain

A brother offended is harder to be won than a strong city: and their contentions are like the bars of a castle.
The Holy Bible

A family is a place where principles are hammered and honed on the anvil of everyday living.
Charles Swindoll

Happy or unhappy, families are all mysterious. We have only to imagine how differently we would be described – and will be, after our deaths – by each of the family members who believe they know us.
Gloria Steinem

When our relatives are at home, we have to think of all their good points or it would be impossible to endure them. But when they are away, we console ourselves for their absence by dwelling on their vices.
George Bernard Shaw

The voice of parents is the voice of gods, for to their children they are heaven’s lieutenants.
William Shakespeare

For there is no friend like a sister in calm or stormy weather; To cheer one on the tedious way, to fetch one if one goes astray, to lift one if one totters down, to strengthen whilst one stands.
Christina Rossetti

The dynamics and structures found in those groups called families in our society may not be evident in those groups called families in other places and times.
Ronald David Laing

The trouble with the family is that children grow out of childhood, but parents never grow out of parenthood.
Evan Esar

Families are nothing other than the idolatry of duty.
Ann Oakley

It seems to be almost inevitable that the man who accepts a subordinate economic position in the Family degenerates into a loafer and a tyrant.
Helen Dendy Bosanquet

As the family goes, so goes the nation and so goes the whole world in which we live.
John Paul Ii

The family that stays together probably has only one car.
Knofel Staton

The family and the couple are by far the most disintegrating centers of false moral, intellectual, and spiritual well-being in capitalist society.
Carl William Brown

If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.
Bernard Shaw

Family jokes, though rightly cursed by strangers, are the bond that keeps most families alive.
Stella Benson

Never did I think that I became family entertainment.
Jimmy Buffet

The strength of a nation derives from the integrity of the home.
Confucius

Roots is not just a saga of my family. It is the symbolic saga of a people.
Alex Haley

Growing up human is uniquely a matter of social relations rather than biology. What we learn from connections within the family takes the place of instincts that program the behavior of animals; which raises the question, how good are these connections?
Elizabeth Janeway

The most socially subversive institution of our time is the one-parent family.
Paul Johnson

A poor relation is the most irrelevant thing in nature, a piece of impertinent correspondence, an odious approximation, a haunting conscience, a preposterous shadow, lengthening in the noon-tide of our prosperity. He is known by his knock.
Charles Lamb

Women know what men have long forgotten. The ultimate economic and spiritual unit of any civilization is still the family.
Clare Boothe Luce

A man ought to live so that everybody knows he is a Christian… and most of all, his family ought to know.
Dwight L. Moody

A brother is a friend provided by nature.
Legouve Pere

The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.
Eleanor Roosevelt

You hear a lot of dialogue on the death of the American family. Families aren’t dying. They’re merging into big conglomerates.
Erma Bombeck

A family is a unit composed not only of children, but of men, women, an occasional animal, and the common cold.
Ogden Nash

Woman is the highest, holiest, most precious gift to man. Her mission and throne is the family, and if anything is withheld that would make her more efficient, useful, or happy in that sphere, she is wronged, and has not her rights.
John Todd

He that loves not his wife and children feeds a lioness at home and broods a nest of sorrows.
Jeremy Taylor

The striking point about our model family is not simply the compete-compete, consume-consume style of life it urges us to follow…. The striking point, in the face of all the propaganda, is how few Americans actually live this way.
Louise Kapp Howe

Marriage is the agreement to let a family happen.
Betty Jane Wylie

Raising a family wasn’t something I put on my resumé, but I have to ask myself, would I apply for the same job again?
Erma Bombeck

In one family, every little plan or question is discussed amid bickering and irritation. In another, without the least effort, every discussion goes on amid perfect peace. This is just as easy, and infinitely more agreeable: only, in many homes it does not happen to be the family habit.
Charles Buxton

The most socially subversisve institution of our time is the one-parent family.
Paul Johnson

Children keep a family together, especially when one can’t get a babysitter.
Frederick Shepperd

Women’s liberationists spread the word that the only peaceful family is one in which either the wife is enslaved or the husband is androgynous.
Emmett R. Tyell

My family begins with me, your family ends with you.
Author Unknown

By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he’s wrong.
Charles Wadworth

People who have good relationships at home are more effective in the marketplace.
Zig Ziglar

The family is the test of freedom; because the family is the only thing that the free man makes for himself and by himself.
G. K. Chesterton

He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.
Francis Bacon

A large family party is rather too much like a flight of tomtits; everlasting twitter, but no conversation; gregariousness without companionship.
Charles Buxton

I can’t help detesting my relations. I suppose it comes from the fact that none of us can stand other people having the same faults as ourselves.
Oscar Wilde

The family spirit has rendered man carnivorous.
Francis Picabia

As a single dried tree, if fired, sets a whole forest on fire, so does a bad son destroy a whole family.
Chanakya

Family jokes, though rightly cursed by strangers, are the bond that keeps most families alive.
Stella Benson

I dedicate this aphorism to my relatives, just to let the world know that I had some.
Carl William Brown

Break up the institution of the family, deny the inviolability of its relations, and in a little while there would not be any humanity.
E. H. Chapin

The family is an absolute monarchy in miniature.
Abraham Miller

In the family, happiness is in the ratio in which each is serving the others, seeking one another’s good, and bearing one another’s burdens.
Henry Ward Beecher

Two people who know they do not understand each other, Breeding children whom they do not understand And who will never understand them.
T. S. Eliot

The family is the most basic unit of government. As the first community to which a person is attached and the first authority under which a person learns to live, the family establishes society’s most basic values.
Charles Caleb Colton

He that raises a large family does, indeed, while he lives to observe them, stand a broader mark for sorrow; but then he stands a broader mark for pleasure too.
Benjamin Franklin

Where can a person be better than in the bosom of their family.
Marmontel Gretry

The many books I have at home, among other things, serve both to keep relatives away and to keep me away from them.
Carl William Brown

Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family. Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one.
Jane Howard

The happiest moments of my life have been the few which I have passed at home in the bosom of my family.
Thomas Jefferson

If the family goes, so goes our civilization.
Ronald Reagan

I’m from such an old family, it’s been condemned.
Phyllis Diller

God, I hate my family, these people I never chose to love, but love all the same.
Anne Enright

In houses where, in place of that sacred, inmost flame of love, there is discord at the centre, the whole household becomes hypocritical.
William Makepeace Thackeray

That was what you did with family when you’d been worried about them, you grabbed them and held on to them and told them how much they’d pissed you off, and it was okay, because no matter how angry you got, they still belonged to you.
Cassandra Clare

The family was an art … and the dinner table was the place it found expression.
Don Delillo

I can’t wait to give my writing to my relatives; perhaps it will finally be a good opportunity for them to read a book.
Carl William Brown

When a man is in love with one woman in a family, it is astonishing how fond he becomes of every person connected with it.
William Makepeace Thackeray

Certain is it that there is no kind of affection so purely angelic as of a father to a daughter. In love to our wives there is desire, to our sons, ambition. But, to our daughters, there is something which there are no words to express.
Joseph Addison

Families, doing everything for each other out of imagined obligation and always getting in each other’s way, what a tangle.
John Updike

A family needs to work as a team, supporting each other’s individual aims and aspirations.
Buzz Aldrin

The government is becoming the family of last resort.
Jerry Brown

Family isn’t something that’s supposed to be static, or set. People marry in, divorce out. They’re born, they die. It’s always evolving, turning into something else.
Sarah Dessen

Go to friends for advice, woman for love, strangers for charity and relatives for nothing.
Spanish Proverb

What family has no mariner in its tree? No fool, no felon. No fisherman.
Cormac Mccarthy

In that family where the husband is pleased with his wife, and the wife with her husband, happiness will assuredly be lasting.
Brahma

An advantage of poverty, your relatives gain nothing by your death.
Hebrew Proverb

Friends are “annuals” that need seasonal nurturing to bear blossoms. Family is a “perennial” that comes up year after year, enduring the droughts of absence and neglect. There’s a place in the garden for both of them.
Erma Bombeck

Families, I hate you! Shut-in homes, closed doors, jealous possessions of happiness.
Andre Gide

What is family? They were the people who claimed you.
Sarah Dessen

The greatest thing in family life is to take a hint when a hint is intended — and not to take a hint when a hint isn’t intended.
Robert Frost

The rich never have to seek out their relatives.
Italian Proverb

None but a mule denies his family.
Arabian Proverb

All people are your relatives, therefore expect only trouble from them.
Chinese Proverb

Govern a family as you would cook a small fish – very gently.
Chinese Proverb

In a broken nest there are few whole eggs.
Chinese Proverb

Man is the head of the family, woman the neck that turns the head.
Chinese Proverb

A small family is soon provided for.
English Proverb

A good son-in-law is like the acquisition of a new son; a bad one is like the loss of your daughter.
Jewish Proverb

Look for the good, not the evil, in the conduct of members of the family.
Jewish Proverb

One of life’s greatest mysteries is how the boy who wasn’t good enough to marry your daughter can be the father of the smartest grandchild in the world.
Jewish Proverb

When a father gives to his son, both laugh; when a son gives to his father, both cry.
Jewish Proverb

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